1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to automobile seats, and more specifically to an adult to infant foldable seat for automobiles and other moving vehicles which have trunks or storage compartments behind the convertible seat.
2. Description of the Prior Art
An automobile adult seat does not provide adequate safety for children, particularly very young infants. Numerous devices have been proposed for enhancing the safety for children while driving in automobiles. While seat belts have provided some measure of safety for older children, separate smaller seats have generally been used for young infants since these tend to restrain the child from movement in almost every direction.
In most instances, these infant seats have been separate seats which can be installed on an adult automobile seat and secured in some fashion thereto by means of, for example, the adult seat belts. This type of infant seat suffers from two primary disadvantages. Firstly, if the infant seat is improperly fastened to the adult seat, the seat can move relative to or separate from the adult seat thereby failing to provide the expected restraint on the child. Secondly, the adult seat to which the infant seat is attached is clearly not usable by the adult until the infant seat is removed. Therefore, whenever an adult needs to use the seat, the infant seat must be removed and stored until the next time it is needed for the infant. When the trunk of the vehicle has sufficient space therein, the normally bulky infant seats can be stored therein although they obviously occupy a significant portion of the trunk space. In addition to being a time consuming and inconvenient procedure, the infant seat must again be carefully secured to the adult seat each time that the infant needs to use same.
As a result of the disadvantages discussed above in connection with movable or portable infant seats, there has also been proposed infant seats which are integrally built into an adult automobile seat such that the adult seat can be converted into an infant seat typically by moving one or more members of the adult seat and uncovering and unfolding a normally collapsed infant seat into its desired position.
The infant seats of this last mentioned type generally provide a child restraint which is in the nature of a bar or padded portion which is placed in front of the child while it is within the infant seat. The restraint, however, serves no other function, for example, when the infant seat is converted into an adult seat. These infant seats, therefore, have tended to be complex in construction and expensive to manufacture, and have not always provided the measure of safety or strength that the child restraint is intended to provide.
I have disclosed an automobile convertible seat in my earlier issued U.S. Pat. No. 4,664,443 issued on May 12, 1987, wherein an automobile adult seat converts to a child seat by pivotally mounting the child seat about fixed pivot points between an extended position wherein the child seat is usable by the child to a retracted position wherein the child seat is pivotally moved into the trunk or storage compartment behind the adult seat thereby converting the infant seat into an adult seat. However, my prior automobile convertible seat was disclosed as a single rigid unit which required significant clearance to allow the seat to be pivoted about the lower pivots into the trunk or storage compartment. This could be a problem in certain compact automobiles which have smaller trunk compartments or in certain older vehicles which have generally small clearances between the rear deck or platform beneath the rear window and the wheelwell of the automobile chassis. In the aforementioned situations, it is not practical or possible to install larger infant seats of the type disclosed in my previous patent.